The price of cotton is dictated by quality and the most significant factor contributing to the fiber quality is the length distribution of the fibers contained within the population. Therefore, it is of importance to accurately and repeatably measure the length of fibers within a population so that it is graded properly. For this reason, testing of fiber samples, such as, but not limited to, cotton, is important for determining the market value of a particular batch of material, as well as for determining a suitable usage and the processing required in gins or spinning mills. Today, nearly 100% of the cotton grown in the United States is classed employing testing instruments. Testing includes determining such characteristics as fiber length, as well as the content of undesired textile entities such as trash and neps.
In most current fiber measuring systems, the characteristics of groups or bundles of fibers are measured. From these measurements, individual fiber attributes are inferred. Thus, a true and accurate representation of individual fiber characteristics is hard to develop from such measurements. 20 million bales of cotton are produced in the United States each year with each bale being tested for a number of properties including fiber length parameters. The systems currently used to measure fiber length parameters are believed to have significant error associated with the bundle testing method mentioned above. For example, High Volume Instrumentation (HVI) measures fibers in bulk while the Advanced Fiber Information System (AFIS) measures fibers individually. However, in both cases, the length is measured indirectly. Measuring the length indirectly introduces significant amounts of error into the measurement.
Thus, a need still exists for a highly precise system to individualize and analyze measuring individual fiber properties including length of fibers.